Enrico Fermi, winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize in physics, is known to the public primarily for his role in producing the first controlled nuclear-chain reaction at the University of Chicago during the Manhattan Project in 1942. But he also made major contributions to the statistics of electron gas, the statistical model of the atom itself, to the understanding of radioactivity, and influenced a whole new generation of physicists. Special events to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Fermis birth were held in Rome and Pisa, Italy, as well as the University of Chicago, Columbia University in New York City, and at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill. The U.S. Postal Service, meanwhile, issued a stamp in Fermis honor.